By Arthur Santana Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 17, 2001; 1:07 PM
D.C. police are bracing for as many as 100,000 protesters at next month's World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings, Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said this morning, doubling the city's previous estimates of demonstrators.
Speaking at a morning briefing, Ramsey said that a turnout of 100,000 would dwarf the 20,000 protesters who crowded the city for similar meetings here in April 2000. As many as 100,000 protesters gathered at World Bank meetings in Genoa, Italy, last month at which a protester was killed.
The city also released the text of a letter written by Mayor Anthony A. Williams to President Bush earlier this month.
"Intelligence information indicates that the protests and demonstrations surrounding this IMF/World Bank meeting will be of an intensity, scope and magnitude that we have never seen in this city," Williams wrote in the Aug. 6 letter. He went on to add that the city needs a commitment from the federal government so that police and other city agencies can make arrangements to bring in extra police from other cities.
"If the resources cannot be identified in very short order, the agencies will not be able to protect our city and insure the integrity of the meetings," Williams wrote to Bush.
That theme was continued this morning by Deputy Mayor Margret Nedelkoff Kellems who said that negotiating with the federal government for $30 million in assistance has been "a long, tedious process." But Kellems, pointing out that District taxpayers should not bear the brunt of paying for what is a federal event added that the federal government "recognizes their responsibility."
Protesters, who have gathered at previous World Bank/IMF meetings in Seattle and Quebec as well as here and in Genoa, want to draw attention to problems of globalization, which they see as benefiting rich nations at the expense of poor nations.
Today's briefing came on the heels of the police department's decision to cordon off the White House from protesters by constructing a nine foot fence. The steel hurricane fencing set in Jersey barriers would cost about $1.8 million, Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said yesterday.